Thursday, August 16, 2012

Assam & Azad Maidan - How MSM Sibalises Riots

Here’s what Kapil Sibal
said last year: “People have been asking why we can't just prosecute
individuals who post hate-speech instead of blocking sites but there are three
reasons why that's not workable … each time material of this kind becomes the subject
of legal proceedings in open court, you will have protests, mobs, perhaps
violence — even if the media is responsible, and doesn't report the details.”
Someone else lent strong support to Sibal in his attempt to censor the internet
with this: “I've had to deal with stone-throwing mobs on the streets because of
some moron in the United States.. Each time, people could have got killed. For
me, this isn't an airy-fairy ideological issue, it's a real problem.” This is
none other than Omar Abdullah, CM of
J&K. Relax Mr.CM, there might be morons in the US but it’s the morons at Azad Maidan (AM) that indulged in
unprovoked stone throwing and violence on August 11, 2012. So how do we use the
AM story? Let’s check with the MSM.

Till August 11 there was hardly any incident where material from the
internet could have been blamed for violence on the streets. I guess both Sibal
and Abdullah have been quiet since the violence at AM wasn’t communal but
unleashed by one group on its own. The violence wasn’t by Sagarika’s “Internet Hindus” or Barkha’s “Bigots”. If that had indeed
been the case then Sibal, Abdullah, Sagarika, Barkha, Rajdeep, Ashutosh and
more would have come out with all guns blazing. Instead, our news channels
didn’t know where to look or who to blame for what happened. And then some even
had the gall to blame the social media for provoking people.

This is a tweet by the mother-in-law of MSM sermonisers, Ashutosh of IBN7, he blames some “gangs” on Twitter. If he has seen some
gangs making the provocation he doesn’t know who but wants others to identify
and prosecute them. One can safely believe that he hasn’t seen any and is
indulging in lie-mongering of his own kind else he could have openly named some
people or gangs. The man considers himself a ‘journalist’ and makes terribly
loose statements frequently on Twitter without any specifics. If Bollywood ever
wanted an actor to portray fake outrage at the drop of every 12-rupee coin,
Ashutosh would be their man.

Let’s take a look at a tweet by Sonia
Singh of NDTV. Again, she too claims people are putting up images that can
create ‘tension’ without
verification. Once again, she tweets without any specific reference to any
image. It would be safe to assume she is referring to the same gang as Ashutosh
and we all know who that gang is. Don’t we? My response to her tweet is also in
the image. Truth of the matter is that the online folks on websites and twitter
posted accurate images of some criminals from AM. Some of these were also reported
by news websites like Firstpost.
Some images were captured by Atul Kamble
of Mid-day who was assaulted by policemen. Hmm! Not to be left out, Akash Banerjee of Headlines Today jumps into support SoniaSingh. He
says ‘self-check’ not possible in
social media which is why MSM is needed.

First, nobody has said MSM is not needed and there’s no context. Second,
there’s a history of lies and bloopers from MSM which Banerjee’s third rate
channel makes him forget. His own super-boss, Aroon Purie, once plagiarised and blamed jet-lag for it. And then
as recent as a few days back a major news paper’s website announced Dara Singh dead three days before his
actual death. DNA announced Vilasrao Deshmukh dead on August 7, a
week before his actual death. As for sensitivity, Banerjee’s channel was the only one to flash tits of the Guwahati
molestation victim. And has the MSM already forgotten how they brought hell on Sarabjit Singh's family with the wrong news of his release from Pakistan? So Banerjee and his tribe would do well to look inward before
sermonising.

Media crooks frequently utter nonsense on twitter and their channels
and when confronted and questioned they play victim and wrongly complain of
being abused. Scientists are about to call this phenomenon ‘Barkhadrome’! Truth: None of these
unworthies and their channels had the honesty or guts to question the threats
issued by Asaduddin Owaisi on Muslim
radicalisation. Events of AM followed immediately after his threats in
parliament. It’s actually quite a few from Twitter who gave the warning signals
which even the Mumbai police seem to have missed.

Here’s a tweet that mentions gruesome pictures being circulated in Mumbai to provoke muslims to
attend the protest meet at AM. These were supposedly pics of muslims who were
butchered in Burma. I am quite certain the Mumbai police too would have got
these fliers if these were circulated to citizens so openly everywhere. Neither
Ashustosh nor Sonia Singh had the courage the point this out but then come out
like angels sermonising. MrsGandhi’s tweet’s timeline is 1.57 am on August
10 which is more than 24 hours before the AzadMaidan gathering. This is
apart from SMSes that were being relayed according to the police themselves.

That’s not all, the tweet from @Pushpraj4U
from the ground mentions groups getting into local trains in Mumbai and
shouting slogans. This was confirmed on August 13 in an NDTV program itself by
Sonia Singh. How come news channels missed this too? Or were they sleeping on
their jobs?

Incidentally, a fake handle, @officialskynews tweeted Margaret
Thatcher’s death on August 14 but was quickly dismissed as a rumour by other
tweeters. That’s how social media works unlike MSM which perpetuates lies
unless challenged by social media.

Now, let’s get to the juicy part where both Ashutosh and Sonia advise
to check and recheck before tweeting images or provoking people. Far from
tweeting rumours or lies many on twitter have been very careful and were
verifying each news item and each report and each image in tweets. Along with
others I too tried to verify the images that were received in a leaflet by
@MrsGandhi. And what comes up is shocking to say the least. The images in the leaflet were faked to
provoke muslims. The images were from earthquakes and other incidents in
Thailand or China and had nothing to do with Burma.

I tweeted information about
the site which showed the mischief that many muslim leaders were indulging in
to provoke their followers online and on the ground. Farhaz Ahmed, a Pakistani,
in his blog PakAlert Press
explains systematically how images of deaths were misused to provoke muslims.
His post was in the context of Pakistani social media and not India. In India
it was Muslim leaders who planned the agitation who used fake pics and that
wasn’t through social media. It is just that both Ashutosh and Sonia Singh
would have found the same info as I and others did and could have been specific
about whom or which group is misusing and abusing social media. They did not! And it’s not very hard to
tell why!

There are three interesting images of individuals that are disturbing.
Two are of those vandalising the Amar Jawan memorial which was tweeted by many
and also carried by online news sites like Firstpost. There’s a third image of
a man carrying an automatic gun through the streets at the scene of violence. (See
Youtube 0.23) All these three
images were buried by all the news channels. Not one of them was outraged at
these disturbing images. Now I would like Ashutosh or Sonia to answer if these
pics were mischievous and faked by Twitter.

Were these images not available to
them? They should have flashed these images or at least the faces of these
criminals so that police or citizens could identify them. Nothing! As for Akash
Banerjee, it would have been better for Headlines Today to have shown the faces
of these thugs instead of cleavage of molestation victims. All the violence,
including two people killed, was in support of victims from fake pics that were
used by the leaders of the protest at AM. No channel reported the truth. Not
Sonia’s NDTV, not Ashutosh’s IBN7 and not Banerjee’s Headlines Today. So my
modest suggestion to these media celebs is to look inward and not sermonise
social media.

So what’s with the rant against the Twitterati and social media by
these media celebs? Now that’s where Kapil Sibal comes in. First he has made no
secret his wish to censor the internet and had faced flak from every corner. What’s
his reasoning? It’s that there was potential of the internet, social media
sites to incite violence. Even communal violence! AM could have been handy but
unfortunately from the wrong party. So media hacks like Ashustosh and Sonia are
doing a great job for Sibal. Keep accusing Tweeters of posting fake pics,
unverified pics and messages, of provoking Hindus and Muslims without any
specifics and there you go; the perfect recipe for Sibal to act upon. None of
these news channels have shown any courage or nerve to report Assam or AM
accurately and honestly.

At the time of writing there are rumours of Assamese and NE citizens being threatened and that there’s an exodus of thousands from Hyderabad (A.Owaisi’s constituency) and Bangalore. There were special trains organised for them to leave at Bangalore (From late on August 15th to early hours on August 16). Not one of the many 24X7 news channels had any report on the facts on the ground. Instead, celebs like Barkha were tweeting silly nonsense, unreliable information with no real source and even colouring events with clever communal tweets. Truth is, Barkha, Sonia, Ashutosh and others in MSM do have an agenda unlike most on twitter. Real threat is that all of this may not end with Assam
alone. Not one word from MSM on these threats. If not for social media they may
have even totally blacked-out and buried all of these incidents
including Assam and AM. Fact: unable to face the onslaught of fast
dissemination of information on the social media these media celebs cook up
allegations against it. Sorry, won’t sell anymore, no matter how much they
Sibalise riots and violence.

20 comments
:

This is really a wonderful article. only one thing to add would be if the Barkhas, Sonias, Ashutoshs and others in MSM would have reported in an unbiased manner the sequence of events starting from Assam, Mumbai riots, attack on NE ppl in Pune, Threats to BODO ppl in Hyd and Bangalore(Bangalore till confirmed all are rumors but newspapers reported a Tibetan person was stabbed misunderstood to be from NE) then people in general and twitter would have had a correct view of things and not resorted to believe in rumors(one of such thing was started by HT http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/NE-students-exodus-growing-two-special-trains-provided-from-Bangalore/Article1-914120.aspx at 10 pm 15 Aug night). But our MSM remains silent or blacks out news be it assam or any UPA ruled state but jumps the gun for a rumor in case of Bangalore. But one thing as pointed out by a lot of ppl on twitter that atleast via BJP this plight of ppl from NE will catch attention of the nation. I hope so

Thank you for this wonderful article..It is a great shame that we live in a time when majority of our MSM is corrupt.. It makes me sick to call Ashutosh from IBN7 a journo...he just doesn't have any responsibility or moral ethics to be a journo...Thanks god that we have many people like you who exposes the lies of MSM on a daily basis.

Another hard hitting piece ! However, the sad part is these media crooks are sold out to such a level that they do not even know that there is something called as 'conscience'. Keep up the good work, its good to keep an audit trail of these crooks ...

Excellent article. Ravinar, I'm curious to know whether you get any responses for your tweet by these crooks.BTW , to be fair to Times Now, Arnab had fairly objective show targeting Himanshu Roy, Sr police officer of Mumbai for the failure.

Brilliant article Ravi! Your efforts are much appreciated and would def help in cleaning the media. These crooks should be named and shamed to help people to understand the true nature of these journos.

I publish a blog www.indiatva.com and would like to link to www.mediacrooks.com. Please email me your preferred anchor text and short sentence which you want to be featured.

This media crook Ashutosh hails from Aaj Tak. He nearly abused George Fernandese in 2001 (TehelkaGate). He is the pioneer of recent trend of sensationalize the news. Aaj Tak is the torch holder of presenting entertainment and advertisement in the name of news. I first witnessed an hour long coverage about the film 'Lagaan'. I wondered whether it was news or advertisement....

Simply another great write up! My view is that the MSM journos are so much obsessed with power and Sickularism that they do not know what their right hand is doing. There is a saying by Sant Kabir which goes like " Kabirdas ki Kali kamaliya, chadho na duje rang." meaning that you can not paint any colour over Black. These poor souls are so black now that only redemption will come when they kick the bucket.

Wonderfule article,..I stoped watching the News on TV logtime ago.I read blogs / online new s for any wirthy news.Most of the channels run for TRP and they ashow whats good for the Seculars and Congis.

Another awesome post!! These people who call them as journalist are the most communal and they are not transparent. why these people think that once they speak/tweet against hindu's they become celeb !!!

Coming back to your blog, I am wondering what is the take of our BD, RS, SG, KT and AG on NE people fleeing Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore? Wonder, even they will open their trap.

If Spineless Sikhandi Poodle tells today that he will seal Assam border with Bangladesh and put Ajmal and AO behind bar, all the problems will vanish. But billion dollar question is? Will he ever tell. .

Justice Katju was right, the very first time he said something like "Media people are born with low intellect" ... media should help in Nation building, but in turn, it's breaking the nation, with biased and weak reporting....

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